Field
The present disclosure relates generally to communication systems, and more particularly, to providing location information with private expressions for device to device (D2D) communications in a wireless communications based network.
Background
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various telecommunication services such as telephony, video, data, messaging, and broadcasts. Typical wireless communication systems may employ multiple-access technologies capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing available system resources (e.g., bandwidth, transmit power). Examples of such multiple-access technologies include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, single-carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) systems, and time division synchronous code division multiple access (TD-SCDMA) systems.
These multiple access technologies have been adopted in various telecommunication standards to provide a common protocol that enables different wireless devices to communicate on a municipal, national, regional, and even global level. An example of a telecommunication standard is Long Term Evolution (LTE). LTE is a set of enhancements to the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) mobile standard promulgated by Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). LTE is designed to better support mobile broadband Internet access by improving spectral efficiency, lower costs, improve services, make use of new spectrum, and better integrate with other open standards using OFDMA on the downlink (DL), SC-FDMA on the uplink (UL), and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna technology. LTE may support direct device-to-device (D2D) communication.
Currently, many devices (e.g., user equipments (UEs)) may be operable in a cellular network. The D2D feature of LTE may provide for communications between UEs that are in direct communication range. UEs may use expressions to announce various attributes (user or service identities, application features, interests, location, etc.) as driven by proximity-aware applications. Expressions may be public—when they are accessible to any UEs within range of the announcing UE, or private—when access is limited to only certain UEs that have been authorized in advance. When using private expressions, an announcing UE may have provided (e.g., via an offline process) a corresponding expression-code to the one or more monitoring UEs that have been granted permission to access/decode the announced expression when in proximity.
Generally, expressions may be announced in a broadcast fashion on licensed spectrum. These announcements are size-constrained, in order to accommodate a large number of such announcing devices sharing the licensed spectrum with regular 3G/4G communications. By detecting an expression, a receiver device is able to determine that another device is somewhere nearby. But due to the limited size and content of current expression announcement, the receiver device does not know much else about the announcing UE. For example, received signal strength may provide relative distance information (e.g., whether the announcing UE is further away (geographically) or closer by), but this information is not very reliable as channel conditions vary and may be dependent on other factors.
As the demand for D2D communication increases, there exists a need for methods/apparatuses for efficiently providing location information with expression announcements in wireless communications based networks.